William Jefferson (politician)

William Jennings Jefferson (born March 14, 1947) is an American former politician from Louisiana whose career ended after his corruption scandal and conviction.

Jefferson was born on March 14, 1947, in Lake Providence, the parish seat of East Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

He and his eight brothers and sisters worked alongside their father on their farm, and Jefferson was also a heavy-equipment operator for the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

The Jeffersons were among the few African-American families in the area who in the mid-20th century owned their land (as opposed to sharecropping).

They were regarded with respect, but the family struggled in poverty.

Jefferson graduated from G. W. Griffin High School in Lake Providence.

In 1969, Jefferson received a bachelor's degree from Southern University, a historically black college in Baton Rouge, where he had participated in Army ROTC.

In 1969 he led a protest against substandard campus facilities and negotiated a resolution of the complaint with then-Governor John J. McKeithen.

In 1972, he earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

In 1972 and 1973 Jefferson began the practice of law, having initially served as a clerk for Judge Alvin Benjamin Rubin of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Jefferson is the brother of Betty Jefferson, who became assessor for New Orleans and a Democratic field operative; Mose Jefferson, Archie Jefferson, and Brenda Jefferson Foster.

He is the uncle of Angela Coleman.

Jefferson and his wife, Andrea Jefferson, have five daughters: Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock (a former Louisiana State Representative), Jelani Jefferson Exum (a professor of law at the University of Toledo), Nailah Jefferson (a documentary filmmaker), and Akilah Jefferson.

Jamila, Jalila, and Jelani are all graduates of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Nailah is a graduate of Boston University and Emerson College.

Akilah, a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, attends the Tulane University School of Medicine.

From 1973 to 1975, Jefferson was a legislative assistant to Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana.

On graduation from Southern University, Jefferson was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army; he served in a reserve capacity until 1975.

Jefferson moved to New Orleans in 1976 and was elected to the Louisiana Senate in 1979, where he served until 1990.

He twice unsuccessfully ran for New Orleans mayor, having, along with Ron Faucheux, first challenged Dutch Morial in the election of 1982.

During the 1982 mayoral race, Morial attacked Jefferson by calling him "Dollar Bill".

Jefferson was considered a rising star in Louisiana politics, with some suggesting he would be his state's second African-American governor.

He was defeated by Sidney Barthelemy in the mayoral runoff of 1986.

In 1990, midway through his third term in the state senate, Jefferson ran in the nonpartisan blanket primary for Louisiana's 2nd congressional district seat after 10-term incumbent Lindy Boggs announced her retirement.

He finished first in the seven-candidate field with 24 percent of the vote.

In the runoff, he defeated Marc Morial, the son of Dutch Morial, with 52 percent of the vote.

He was reelected seven times.

In the House, Jefferson joined the Congressional Black Caucus.

He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for nine terms from 1991 to 2009 as a member of the Democratic Party.

He represented Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, which includes much of the greater New Orleans area.

He was elected as the state's first black congressman since the end of Reconstruction.

He considered running for governor in 1995 but did not do so.

In 1996, he received a LLM in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Jefferson ran for governor of Louisiana in the 1999 Louisiana gubernatorial election, and was the de facto "official" Democratic candidate.

However, he lost badly to incumbent Republican Mike Foster, having tallied 29.5 percent of the vote and carrying only New Orleans (coextensive with Orleans Parish) and his native East Carroll Parish, whose seat is Lake Providence.

On November 13, 2009, Jefferson was sentenced to thirteen years in federal prison for bribery after a corruption investigation, the longest sentence ever given to a congressman.

He began serving that sentence in May 2012 at a Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility in Beaumont, Texas.

He appealed his case after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on similar issues.

In light of these findings, on October 5, 2017, Jefferson was ordered released, pending sentencing or other action, after a U.S. District judge threw out 7 of 10 charges against him.

On December 1, 2017, Judge T. S. Ellis III accepted his plea deal and sentenced Jefferson to time served.